A Third of UK Broadband Users Don’t Get their Estimated Speeds

The latest survey of 1,242 ISPreview.co.uk readers has revealed that the vast majority of respondents do know the estimated speed of their broadband Internet connection, yet 34.2% still claim not to be receiving what they’ve been promised.

Happily the vast majority of respondents do at least keep an eye on their Internet performance by conducting regular connection speedtests, with most viewing such testing as being either “very important” (49.3%) or of “average importance” (41.1%) to the monitoring of their connection (just 9.5% felt that it was “not important“).

Do you know the ISPs estimated speed of your Internet connection?
Yes – 91.1%
No – 8.8%

Does your ISP deliver close to or more than the estimated speed for your line?
Yes – 59.9%
No – 34.2%
Don’t know – 5.7%

On average, how often do you run a speedtest (pick closest)?
Once a Week – 35.8%
Once a Month – 31.5%
Once a Day – 17.8%
Very rarely / Never – 14.7%

How important is speed testing to you?
Very Important – 49.3%
Average Importance – 41.1%
Not Important – 9.5%

The ability to understand the real-world performance of your broadband connection is useful for both helping to spot faults and or identifying whether or not your ISP is delivering the promised performance.

The Government also gauge the progress of their national Broadband Delivery UK programme by using some of the same fixed line performance estimates as ISPs, which today’s results suggest may not always be reliable and that could impact the perception of their “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) targets.

Mind you speedtests don’t always give consumers the full picture and sometimes the problems can be due to issues that exist beyond an ISPs ability to control. For example, a slow local WiFi connection or poor home wiring might be just as easy to blame for speed woes as a general network fault on the underlying infrastructure.

Whatever the cause, if you do spot a persistent and noticeable loss of speed then let your ISP know as soon as possible. Ofcom requires ISPs to resolve significant losses of speed and if they can’t then you can often switch provider without penalty, although this may not always solve the problem.

Meanwhile this month’s new survey asks whether the quality of your ISP has improved or not over the past year and in which areas? Vote Here.